Angela Merkel has topped the Forbes World’s 100 Most Powerful Women list for the third year running, holding off Dima Rousseff, Melinda Gates and Michelle Obama. Mrs Obama climbed three places from last year to reach Fourth while Brazilian President Rousseff and philanthropist Melinda Gates took Second and Third. Hilary Clinton remained in the Top 10, ranked Fifth, despite no longer holding the post of US Secretary of State. These five together with Christine Lagarde, the Head of the International Monetary Fund, are pictured above. The Queen dropped her ranking from 26 to 40, while Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling fell further down the ladder, dropping from 78 to 93. There were 14 newcomers to the list, including South Korea’s first female President, Park Geun-hye, Italian particle physicist Fabiola Gianotti and the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire and head of Spanx, Sara Blakely.

One of 2012′s “Women to Watch,” Fabiola Gianotti (No. 78 and pictured below) is a particle physicist and until recently the spokesperson for the $20 million ATLAS 'Large Hadron Collider' experiment at Switzerland’s CERN laboratory. Gianotti was the leader of one of the two teams responsible for identifying the Higgs-Boson “God” particle on July 4th, 2012, which is considered the most basic building block of all matter on Earth.  The spokesperson of the ATLAS experiment is the scientific leader of a collaboration of about 3000 physicists from 177 institutes in 38 countries.

It's also worth reflecting that a "remarkable" number of women on the top 100 Power List list this year are also founders or owners of their own enterprises, not a few of whose eponymous companies are synonymous with high fashion. To name drop a few, Miuccia Prada (58) and Zara founder Rosalia Mera (66) feature, as do Tory Burch (69) and Diane von Furstenberg (74). Other self-made starters include Oprah Winfrey (13), Chinese real estate tycoon Zhang Xin (50) and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, India's first biotech entrepreneur, at number 85.

There were plenty of "powerful" women present among the 13 Tables that turned up to contest our regular Club Night yesterday evening, and certainly - at least according to the male Members - some who would definitely feature in a British "Most Powerful Women" list!!?? It was surprising therefore that the top score of the evening was achieved by two men playing as a Pair. You can read all about it in the Report by clicking on the "News" tab in the Menu to the left of this box. Alternatively you can review the full Leaderboard and the individual Travellers by clicking on "Calendar & Past Results" and again on "Wed 22 May".